For thousands of years, society has recorded information in ledgers, ranging from clay tablets, books through to cloud based computer systems. Despite the advance of technology, all of these ledgers have effectively been siloed with access (or “permission”) to write and read information generally being restricted. Blockchain is a new technology that flips the traditional model of a ledger upside down. Rather than have multiple separate silos, a blockchain (in its purest form) can act…

In a thought-provoking paper presented at this year’s TPRC Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy, Internet scholar Kevin Werbach explains how the use of blockchain technology creates a new kind of trust architecture, which Werbach calls “trustless trust.” Most existing trust relationships are based on a centralized “Leviathan” trust architecture where the state or another centralized authority (for example a central bank) acts as the trusted party of last resort. Other trust…